Wyatt's Zoo

The entrance. See half of the zoo keeper with the green hat who is there to take your tickets.

He had a blast building the zoo!

The penguins, alligator, polar bear and seal.

He even provided water for them. This was his favorite part of his zoo.

Bird's eye view.

Family Vacation to Idaho

At the end of May we took a family vacation.

Levi is doing an internship at a Sheep Experimentation's place in Idaho.

We decided to take a trip and see him on his birthday. We did a lot of things on the trip.

It turned out to be a very fun vacation for everybody, especially Wyatt.

Day 1

We set out early in the morning in Dad's big truck. It went quite well, Wyatt didn't even throw up! He even was most the time okay with us playing music, you see sometimes he says it makes him feel sick. His Sunday clothes apparently have this same affect on him too. :) We got lost a time or two in Salt Lake, but we survived.

HOGLE ZOO

Wyatt had been waiting and preparing for weeks ahead to go to a zoo!

He printed out maps and had to make certain the zoo we went to had penguins. His excitement was uncontrollable when we finally made it there!

This was typical Wyatt at the zoo.

With map in hand leading the way. We struggled to keep up with him.

Quite the little tourist.

Some of the animals he really liked...

Others...not so much.

Yucky rattle snake.

Well can you blame him after our house invasion of snakes?

We soon discovered he did not want to be cooperative with pictures.
He was too busy seeing all the real life animals to bother with posing for a picture.

He says he wants to have a zoo someday but he will only keep the animals for a while and then get new ones. Because, "How would you like to be in a cage all your life?"

Heidi and the penguins.

Yes, Wyatt finally found the PENGUINS!!!

Bryant with his friend Kyler.
Our friends joined us at the zoo.

We found the animals to be a little inactive. But who can blame the I suppose.

The meerkats were the most entertaining. They wrestled each other.

IDAHO

Another 4 or so hour drive and we made it to Idaho!

Levi met us at a motel in Idaho Falls. We were all really happy to see him.

Our motel was in a great location! Right by a river, friendly geese and the temple.

To Wyatt's delight there were TONS of geese and baby geese.

He spent a lot of time playing with them. He fed them Cheetos and mac and cheese.

Look closely it's at the top in the back of the picture.

DAY 2

Happy Birthday Levi

I think this was the most adventurous day...and the most tiresome!

THE FALLS

First a walk around the river near the motel.

By the falls.

Wyatt at the "beach." He loved playing in the sand by the water.

He called it the beach. He liked it almost as much as the zoo!

They made Gilligan's Island.

IDAHO FALLS ZOO

Wyatt says he has to go to 6 zoos before he dies.

He was most concerned about seeing the penguins.

With the flamingos.

We thought these animals were a little more lively than the ones in the other zoo.

BEAR WORLD

Welcome to Bear World!
We got to drive in the bears pen and see lots of bears, elk, deer and other animals.

Watch out and keep the truck windows up!

Look! They turned into bears!

We got to pet a deer in the petting zoo area.

There were also rides.

Wahoo. Levi, Bryant, Wyatt, Heidi and MaryLynn.

Dad and mom riding the train.


REXBURG

We visited the Rexburg Temple.

We also gave Heidi a tour of BYU-Idaho.

Levi, MaryLynn, and Heidi are all excited to attend there together this fall!

CRAIGOS

We ate at Craigos. It is an amazing pizza place.

This is Oreo pizza, by the way.

Wyatt ate too much. Then he felt sick. :)

Exhausted after a day full of excitement.

We also spent some time in the hot tub at the hotel. Wyatt insisted he had to go swimming. But the pool wasn't up and running. He enjoyed the hot tub. I took a picture of him and Bryant in their swimming shorts. It really upset Wyatt because he didn't have his shirt on. After i took the picture he put his shirt on. He is overly concerned with modesty or something :)

We didn't get around to making Levi a cake, but we think he had a good birthday after all.

Wyatt told him he was going to have the best birthday ever!

Day 3

We went to church at the ward Levi goes to at Dubois.

They were friendly. We had a good time.

The Idaho Falls Temple. We walked to the temple and spent some time at the visitors center.

You can't really see us, but we are standing in front of it.

The flowers were beautiful at the temple grounds.

I know, this picture is gross. But I had to include it because it's a memorable part of the trip. Wyatt was in a PANIC!!! After eating some chips the spacer in his mouth started hurting him.

It got bent or something and was hurting his gums. He was worried about it the rest of the trip.

We had some ice cream and used this cool spoon.

We spent the day most of the day relaxing. We need to recover and get recharged for the rest of the fun we had in store.

Day 3

We visited our Great Aunt Pearl. She reminded us so much of granny from the TV show "Beverly Hillbillies." Dad told us before we saw her that she wouldn't be much bigger than Wyatt and he was right. She was just a tiny lady. She was really funny and we enjoyed meeting her, her husband, son, and daughter-law.

It was memorial day. We went to the cemetery at a little town by Idaho Falls.

We visited some graves of ancestors on the Gardner's side.

We ate at the Mexican Bus. It was a cool restaurant.

At first we weren't so sure about it.

But it turned out to have very yummy food and to be lots of fun!

We visted BYU-Idaho again.

We looked around for housing and visited friends.

The Rexburg water park. Wyatt and Bryant had lots of fun on this.

There's Wyatt.

One of my friends made this baloon penguin.

Wyatt was so sad when the air began to leek out of it.

We concluded we didn't want to drive eight hours all at once. So we stayed with our friends in Salt Lake. The kids had fun together.

Day 5

We ate breakfast with our friends and then were on our way. Wyatt enjoyed playing with the kids and trying out their skate board.

The 5 hour drive required some creativeness to keep us entertained.

We played with this ball, sang along to the radio, and took lots of pictures.

Wow it was an exciting trip. Everyone was excited to get home. Well, I (MaryLynn) wished I would have just stayed in Rexburg :)

Heidi's Graduation

I had some photo shop fun with some of the pictures I took if her.

Congratulations Heidi

Graduation

Stressing out before graduation.

The walk

You can't really see her. But she is giving her talk.

As Valedictorian, she got to give a speech. She was really worried about it.

She did a wonderful job!

With the family!

Picture Time

This was one of my favorites.

She had to wear lots of stuff around her neck. We were afraid she might strain herself :)

I really liked this one.

The cool tractor thing Heidi made for Scottie.

He quite liked it.

I just had to include this one!

Mixed Feelings:

How do you feel about being graduated?

Excited!...

well, maybe a little sad...

hum...I don't really know yet.

It still hasn't quite set in.

The Party Afterwards

We had a really fun party.

Friends and family joined us for a cookout in the backyard with dutch oven potatoes.

The cake. It was two layers.

One layer was blue the other yellow.

Grandma Staheli made her this really cute quilt.

Jaxon and Gale enjoying the cake.